Annihilation Seal
Jessica Akerman
28.3.19 – 4.5.19
Opening 28 March, 18:00-20:00
CAMPFA
Jessica Akerman’s first solo show explores the aesthetics of power in visual forms of national identity. Playing with ideas for a cross-national rebranding exercise for nuclear super powers, she uses drawing and objects to explode the geometric and decorative components of national seals and emblems, such as wings, claws, horns, beaks and crops. The wing form features heavily in her work – a symbol with multiple readings – flight, strength, weakness, escape. Featuring carbon paper drawings, Excel spreadsheet drawings and large-scale paper weaving.
Additional information about the artwork in the exhibiton can be downloaded here.
A review of the exhibition by Rory Duckhouse can be read here.
Opening 28 March, 18:00-20:00
CAMPFA
Jessica Akerman’s first solo show explores the aesthetics of power in visual forms of national identity. Playing with ideas for a cross-national rebranding exercise for nuclear super powers, she uses drawing and objects to explode the geometric and decorative components of national seals and emblems, such as wings, claws, horns, beaks and crops. The wing form features heavily in her work – a symbol with multiple readings – flight, strength, weakness, escape. Featuring carbon paper drawings, Excel spreadsheet drawings and large-scale paper weaving.
Additional information about the artwork in the exhibiton can be downloaded here.
A review of the exhibition by Rory Duckhouse can be read here.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Jessica Akerman uses drawing to explore materials and socio-historical narratives, and the places in which they intersect. She has a fascination with the forms of military and surveillance engineering, particularly the Early Warning System sites based in the British landscape. She works with collage, sensory materials such as leather and veneer, lo-fi stationery (fluorescent paper and carbon paper) and banal tools such as Excel spreadsheets, to map forms or topographies, and create decorative patterns. She has worked on the gestures of labour in the performance of women’s work songs, interrogating the experience of people’s working lives (particularly women) be it the physicality, limitations or environmental pressures they face.
Jessica Akerman uses drawing to explore materials and socio-historical narratives, and the places in which they intersect. She has a fascination with the forms of military and surveillance engineering, particularly the Early Warning System sites based in the British landscape. She works with collage, sensory materials such as leather and veneer, lo-fi stationery (fluorescent paper and carbon paper) and banal tools such as Excel spreadsheets, to map forms or topographies, and create decorative patterns. She has worked on the gestures of labour in the performance of women’s work songs, interrogating the experience of people’s working lives (particularly women) be it the physicality, limitations or environmental pressures they face.